Use this path when your main website stays on its current host. An Answer Cloud companion supplies a separate content destination and associated AI features while your existing website team keeps control of the main site.
Establish the companion#
Sign in to Answer Cloud and select the organization that owns the website. If a companion has not been provisioned, contact support with the current website address and the outcome you want. The public /new prompt builds a new standalone hosted website and should not be used to replace an existing companion.
Connect your coding agent through normal OAuth account access. Ask it to inspect the current setup before writing:
Find the Answer Cloud companion for this organization, list its content collections and publishing destinations, and explain what is configured. Do not change or publish anything yet.
The agent should identify the companion site and inspect the existing collections and template health. Keep the main site's hosting pipeline separate from the companion's deployment.
Configure the content and visitor experience#
- Decide what the companion should publish: for example, installation guides, frequently asked questions, or product resources.
- Reuse the configured CMS collections. If another content type is needed, define its fields and destination deliberately; do not create a competing collection just because a name looks similar.
- Draft an initial useful article and preview it before publication.
- If you want chat on the main site, follow external chat installation using the organization's actual integration settings.
- If you want a branded companion address, follow Connect an AI companion subdomain. Keep the main hostname's DNS pointed at the current provider.
When deploying companion layout changes, include its templates and supporting assets. Do not upload an unrelated copy of the main website through the companion's site slug. Companion CMS sites support production publishing rather than hosted staging promotion.
Verify both destinations#
Open the main website and confirm that existing navigation, forms, and pages still work. Then open a companion article and check its title, content, styling, and canonical URL. Test chat from the main website with a question whose answer exists in the published companion content.
Ask the agent to inspect search and reporting only within the intended organization and site. Search or analytics results may lag publication; empty results alone do not prove that a page is unavailable.
For future work, name the destination explicitly: “draft a companion article,” “update the companion template,” or “change the main site's embed.” This keeps the two publishing systems clear.